by Jill Alexander Essbaum
Random House 2015
336 pages Fiction
The Shortlist
The buzz about Hausfrau began pouring in, and I
suddenly remembered that I had a copy in my stack of advanced reader copies.
Eager to see what the buzz was all about, I began reading. I became more and
more distraught. What is this about? Why is it suddenly so popular? Who could
possibly like this woman? So I stopped reading it. Now for me, that is a major
change. I tend to plow through books, and try to understand the book from the
author's perspective. What is the author trying to tell us? In this case, I
just quit. And as you can tell from this posting, I am feeling a lot of guilt
over quitting the book.
In the midst of this decision, I got into a discussion with a friend
about what makes a good protagonist? Especially a woman protagonist? Do you
have to like a protagonist? Certainly
I hadn't liked Rachel from The
Girl on the Train. I hadn't liked Hazel in Miss
Hazel and the Rosa Parks League. I hadn't liked Amy Dunne in Gone Girl
or Annie in A
Small Indiscretion--all books I had completed in the last few months.
I read the review in Shelf
Awareness. The reviewer says: "In Anna Benz, Essbaum has created a
genuine, complex woman whose journey--no matter how dark it may be--reveals
truths as only great literature can. She may have her roots in Tolstoy's Anna
Karenina or Flaubert's Emma Bovary or Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, but she is a
thoroughly modern and distinct character." OK, I thought, what truths is
Anna revealing that I am not understanding. So, I picked the book up again.
But then I turned to the review in The New York Times. That reviewer felt that the author was
intending to show the "loathsomeness that we hide behind the bland and
drab." I get that. But the New York Times reviewer also helped me to decide to quit when she
said, "A few notes to book clubs: If you really must put yourselves
through this thing, good luck finding the hot parts. . . .And if you turn out
to have a member who feels everything that Anna says and does is marvelous, do
feel justified in getting a replacement member." Ah! Finally someone feels
like I do about this book. Our book club tried to read Madame Bovary, and not one of the ten members finished the book.
Where I think the problem for me lies in the fact that I had
recently read too many books with too
many self-indulgent women as protagonists. "Anna was a good wife,
mostly." Hazel felt so sorry for herself and her life situation that she
drank to excess and drove recklessly with her children in the car. Annie felt
that she had to explain her life's mistakes to her son, and Rachel couldn't
live her own life so she inserted herself into the lives of others. Amy, the
queen of self-indulgence, was so self absorbed that she created a whole other
persona that set out to destroy her husband.
I am watching a young friend pull herself together after a
series of bad life decisions. She is beginning to see herself as a whole person
for the first time. I hear her saying to herself, "I am better than
this." Does she descend to self-indulgence on occasion. Of course she
does. Do I eat ice cream sometimes—last night as a matter of fact. I think that
the difference is in intent. Anna in Hausfrau has no intent of abandoning
her self-indulgence. She wallows in it.
So, dear readers, it is OK to quit reading Hausfrau.
Read Life
from Scratch where a beautiful young housewife finds a cure for a bad life
circumstance in cooking or Kristin in Station
Eleven, who resiliently tramps on through a dystopian landscape. Read about
empowered women not self-indulgent women.
The Review in Shelf Awareness.
The review in The New York Times.
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